The Virginia Department of Education (VDOE) today unveiled a new, online resource to help educators and administrators analyze safety data as they develop and review plans to protect children, improve discipline and enhance security. The new Safe Schools Information Resource (SSIR) also broadens public access to school-safety data and provides an easy-to-use tool for creating reports and comparing data for schools and divisions.

"SSIR is a powerful tool for improving the learning environment and puts safety and discipline data at the fingertips of everyone who cares about the commonwealth's public schools," said Superintendent of Public Instruction Billy K. Cannaday Jr.

SSIR enables schools, parents and communities to access data easily, assess school-safety needs and design programs and strategies that address identified needs. Users can track trends and create charts and are able to "drill" down to view and compare data for schools and divisions on specific offenses and discipline outcomes. Information available through SSIR includes:

Frequency of reported offenses

Data on student offenders

Data on non-student offenders

Disciplinary outcomes resulting from student offenses

SSIR was developed by VDOE and Virginia Commonwealth University's Center for School-Community Collaboration as part of the Prevention Through Information initiative, a three-year, federally funded project to improve the capacity of Virginia schools to collect and use safety data for prevention planning.

"By improving access to school-safety data, we increase the ability of educators and communities to protect students by preventing and solving problems," said Donna Dockery, director of the Center for School Community Collaboration.